In today's work environment, mobile connectivity is becoming increasingly important. The ability to send and receive data anywhere within an office, school, factory or other location is quickly becoming a necessity, and wireless local area networks have been introduced to facilitate such mobile connectivity. Generally, in a wireless local area network the access points are directly connected to wired networks, such as an ethernet network. In this approach, maintaining configuration data, performing client authentication and performing other tasks are conducted at the access point. However, such an approach has numerous deficiencies and drawbacks, including elevated costs for network management and maintenance.
To alleviate some of these deficiencies and drawbacks, a wireless network has been developed that is based on an intelligent wireless. In this type of wireless network, access ports are coupled with a wireless switch that contains the intelligence to maintain configuration data, perform client authentication and perform other tasks while the access ports provide only wireless access. This configuration has numerous benefits, including ease of management, cost efficiency and flexibility.
Regardless of the wireless network configuration, adequate wireless coverage for a given area is typically confirmed during installation. This confirmation of adequate coverage generally involves a survey of the area that the wireless network is designed to support. However, these surveys can be costly and time consuming. Additionally, the surveys can be inaccurate, leading to areas of poor or no coverage.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a wireless network system with wireless access ports that substantially eliminates or totally eliminates the installation survey. Furthermore, the other desirable factors and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the for given technical field and background.